Archive for May 2018

The Board Chronicles is an ongoing series of articles about the adventures of Mrs M’s Handmade as a vendor at community festivals & craft fairs. Mrs M’s subsidiary, Mr M’s Woodshop, has been approved to create this chronicle for the good of vendorkind.

I don’t know anything about mules. Some are from Missouri, I think. Shouldn’t I know more about that?

Bishop is a mountain community on the eastern Sierra located on US 395. They have the world’s largest annual celebration of mules each Memorial Day weekend. In addition to the events at the fairgrounds (and the vendors there), a parade is held on Main Street (AKA US 395). The Bishop City Park is there, and the local arts council sponsors their annual craft fair for vendors of handmade goods at that bucolic park with a stream, a duck pond and large shade trees.

Sounds like home.

We’re in. Well, I’m in. Mrs M had to work at her “job,” so my solo act was headed north to see if a celebration of mules was the right place to sell my cutting boards.

New Ideas

This is our my first 4-day event. Fridays are slow and Mondays are awful, I’m told … but it is nice to not put up early Saturday morning and take down late Sunday night. Recovery is a good thing.

Carved signs make their debut on the mesh walls at this event. Booth decor is now complete, for the moment: photographs of my boards in use are mixed with CNC-carved signs with a bit of sass and quotes with a bit of historical interest.

Observations

This is event # 8 of 10 in our 4th Annual Spring Fling.

My goodness, will it never end?

I drove up on Thursday to set up, and met the coordinator, Lynn, who showed me to my booth spaces. By the time I got there in the afternoon, many of the vendors were set up – and gone. I wasn’t late to the party, but I was certainly not early.

By the time I was putting up the Trimline, the late afternoon winds had picked up. Fortunately, a dad that was watching his daughters’ very long swim team meeting at the pool nearby volunteered to help me hold down the dome as I erected the framework.

Yes, his wife got to pick out a cutting board to take home. He was a very big help!

Love our new strategy of staying at AirBnB guest houses whenever we can at out-of-town events. I was in an in-law cottage that was just perfect for a couple’s getaway to the Sierra. Too bad I wasn’t a couple.

The forecast had thunderstorms forecast for Friday and Saturday. Can I not catch a break with the weather this year?

It only took a couple of hours … I was quickly asked how much for the engraved signs on the walls. But I don’t want to sell my booth decor!

Well….

#1 question of the weekend, by a wide margin: “What’s a trivet?”

#1 seller for the last 2 weekends: trivets.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Best visual of the first day was a pair of grandparents facetiming with their daughter and granddaughter. They had bought a stick mule (like a stick pony), and the mule kept dancing in front of the camera during the call. I can appreciate grandparents having fun.

Luckily, the rain stayed away. Ended the first day over $600 in sales. I didn’t really have specific expectations at my first time for this event, but that seemed good to me.

Saturday, I was told to expect light crowds until after the parade, and then expect to be ‘whelmed. It didn’t really happen that way: business was steady all day. I never really got slammed, though there were a few times that transactions happened right on top of each other. I was busy all day.

Best t-shirt of the weekend: a lady wore a shirt that said “Don’t eat watermelon seeds.” It appeared that perhaps she had; something was growing, that’s for sure.

Ended the day Saturday with no rain! I had very good sales, propelled by selling 2x end grain cutting boards with a design I call “Chaos.” They are show stoppers.

And I’m out of them.

Sunday dawned with no rain in the forecast.

It rained on and off through much of the afternoon. I still had OK sales, though. Definitely having a good event, in spite of the rain.

Sold a cheese board that’s going to Essex, and then another that’s going to London. Must be a lot of English tourists here to get a taste of the old west. Or something.

#2 question of the weekend: “Did Benjamin Franklin really say that?”

The day ended with 2x twenty-something couples, and both of the guys really wanted to buy the meat carving boards. Somehow, their delay in making a decision became a discussion about how there was a lack of commitment problem at work here. I backed away. The couples strolled on.

And came back. I sold 2x boards. This was a very good day. Not as good as Saturday, but I got close to a good number. If I can just do a little bit on Monday….

I sputtered along on Monday; we only had 5 hours before we closed up. In the final hour (OF COURSE), I sold one more large cheese & cracker server that put me over $300 for the day. That put me over a very nice number … and yes!

The Board Chronicles is an ongoing series of articles about the adventures of Mrs M’s Handmade as a vendor at community festivals & craft fairs. Mrs M’s subsidiary, Mr M’s Woodshop, has been approved to create this chronicle for the good of vendorkind.

We look forward to the California Strawberry Festival all year long. This will be our 4th trip to Oxnard; read about our past successes & frustrations here: 2017, 2016, 2015.

This year, the event has moved the handmade vendor section to the other side of the event: instead of being on Rose Avenue, we’re now located on a soccer field.

More on that later.

This event has a “hard gate:” you have to pay to get in. Once in, you can sample all manner of strawberry delights, including Mrs M’s favorite, Strawberry beer.

Will we survive the change in vendor location? Will we recover from our off year in 2017 and beat our record performance from 2016?

New Ideas

Because we’re not on Rose Avenue, vendors can’t drive up to their spaces to unload. Rather, they must park outside of the soccer field fence and hand cart in their display. Oh, and….

All vendors are required to use carts with pneumatic tires only. I’ve never seen that requirement put on vendors before. Our cart doesn’t qualify – nor does my booth display cart or the shelf unit that we transport Mrs M’s display in. I asked for permission to use them, and that was denied. Only pneumatic tires were allowed.

I set up on Friday, so we used our Trimline with the mesh walls. Hung on those walls, for the first time, are pictures of my cutting boards & serving pieces in action. Mrs M & I staged most of the photos, but a few were contributed by happy customers.

Observations

This is event # 7 of 10 in our 4th Annual Spring Fling.

I bought a new cart with pneumatic tires, so load in proceeded OK. 10 trips in, 140 steps each way … so load in was roughly 14 times as hard as last year.

Yes. I counted.

While I counted steps, I also observed the other vendors to see what their cart tires were like. Unfortunately, I estimate only 10-20% of vendors were using appropriate carts.

A few vendors also used rolling carts in their booth, and not one had the appropriate tires.

In addition to the cart requirement, vendors were to mitigate damage to the turf by putting squares of carpet or wood between the turf and every point of contact the vendors put in place in their booth, including the canopy legs, product containers, display pieces, etc. I cut 80 squares of plywood so we would have enough for our double booth. Nearly every vendor did similar mitigation; I only saw one that didn’t.

Did the promoter do anything about the vendors that didn’t comply? Not in my experience. Did I get an apology because I bought a special cart, and didn’t use my rolling display pieces like the other vendors did? Nope.

I know I have a problem: I’m a black & white guy. I follow the rules, every time. When other vendors cheat the rules (you know, like artists always do!), I don’t know how to cope. I am very frustrated, though.

A lady rolled up to the booth in a wheel chair, pushed by her son. She stood, took off the cannula that was supplying her with oxygen, and walked into the booth to choose her cutting board. Her husband and son stayed on the outside of the booth while she made her choice. First time that has happened.

Another lady walked into the booth with her young daughter. She was Asian American, I thought … but perhaps not. She could not speak English, and her daughter was her translator. They looked at cutting boards, asked questions, and then eventually transitioned over to looking at Magic Bottle Openers. The non-English speaker touched every MBO, and opened bottles with most of them to make sure they worked! She found one she liked before I was out of bottle caps, fortunately.

A family with a very young daughter (4? 5?) walked into Mrs M’s booth, and the mother informed Mrs M that her daughter had stolen an animal from ZooSoapia, and had returned it. She was in the booth to formally apologize to Mrs M. Her parents stood there and made her get the words out before they would let the daughter leave the booth. Aggressive parenting, on display. Kudos.

We went to load out … and I discovered this:

Yes, our brand new cart with blow up tires … didn’t hold air for 2 days. 3 tires were flat after 2 days, and I had to borrow a cart to load out.

Requests included a board shaped like California (2x!), a backgammon board, a spoon rest and a smaller heart (who would want that?).

In the end, the relocation of the handmade vendor area to the soccer field was an improvement, I felt. The shopping experience was an improvement. It was a stroll across the grass, rather than a walk down the hard pavement. So, the result was good … but our sales were essentially flat to last year, which was a down year. This year, we were down again … by $29. Down 0.9%. Hard to be upset about that. But pleased? Nope.

The Food

Best Meal: We went to El Pescadero in Fillmore on our way home Saturday night, and it was a fabulous meal. Officially, this is the best Mexican restaurant we have found in our neighborhood. It’s better than any Mexican restaurant in Santa Clarita, without question.

Last week, I was on a crash course to finish this batch of trivets. The inventory was too low for our big event this weekend, the California Strawberry Festival.

So, one crash later, I was done with 23 new trivets. I put them in a prominent position in the booth’s outside corner, on a temporary pile of containers and in a crate … which invites people to flip through the pieces as they look for the right ones.

I learned two things:

Many people have no idea what a trivet is. The word doesn’t translate into Spanish, I’m told, so a large number of people with a Mexican or Central American heritage have no idea what the sign means when it says “Trivets.” Of course, there’s a large number of people that are Americanized that have no clue, as well. “Trivets.” A mystery. Who knew?

People love flipping through a crate of trivets. Oh so many people did that on Saturday.

And that’s a good thing. Some of the flippers even bought one or two.

The flipping continues today at the California Strawberry Festival in Oxnard. Come and flip some, if you please. I would truly appreciate it: load out starts at 6:30pm, and I hope I have a lighter load to come home.

And that, of course, will begat a new crash course for next week … a problem for another day.

The 4th Annual Spring Fling is in full throttle and, yes, I’ve been busy.

Here’s a collection of cutting boards I’ve finished over the last few weeks. As you’ve seen, I’m making many other things, as well, but I need to make cutting boards all of the time, or I’ll have problems.

That’s particularly true of the end grain boards, since they take a minimum of 2 glue-ups, so they take twice as long to make as the edge grain boards (the “stripey” ones).

And, of course, the serving trays are all stripey. These 2 have been languishing in a cabinet for a couple of months waiting on me to take them over the finish line. Clearly, they were worth the effort. What took so long?

If you find yourself out and about in Southern California this weekend, you will find Mrs M and I at Oxnard’s 35th Annual California Strawberry Festival. It’s quite the thing, with crowds in excess of 50,000 annually. You’ll find the fine art & craft section has been moved to the other side of the festival … near the Green Gate. We are in booths 254 & 256.

The Board Chronicles is an ongoing series of articles about the adventures of Mrs M’s Handmade as a vendor at community festivals & craft fairs. Mrs M’s subsidiary, Mr M’s Woodshop, has been approved to create this chronicle for the good of vendorkind.

I know this event is quirky.

Simi Valley is a bedroom community that’s very similar to Santa Clarita, and we’ve done their Street Fair twice before (2015, 2016).

But, this event is unusual. It’s put on by the Chamber of Commerce, and they have a “required” pre-meeting for vendors. That’s where you can get your booth number confirmed, and talk about how the event is set-up with the organizers. Since I’ve done 100+ events in multiple cities and now 2 states … I’m not enthusiastic about driving to their office to hear about their event. Or be reminded to wear comfortable shoes.

Write a good info packet and I’m ready to go. Every time.

Another quirk is they don’t let people drive onto the street to set up: they make you cart everything in for some reason that’s never been clear to me. In previous years, there was enough room on the street. This year’s street is tighter, but it’s still an unusual situation to require 100% of things to be carted in, as they have in years past.

We didn’t do this event last year as it is only a 1-day event, and there was a better 2-day event available. This year, though, the Sunday of the weekend was not only Mother’s Day, it was also our 40th wedding anniversary. We agreed to take the day off so we could celebrate … so this Saturday event fit the calendar perfectly.

Which is always important to me. So, it’s off to Simi….

New Ideas

The new location meant going to the mandatory meeting was a good idea, I thought, and I learned that I either had to cart everything in at 6:30am, hire their UTV/wagon driver to cart things in for me or I could drive onto the street with the trailer at 5am to unload right by the booth. That’s a no brainer for me. I don’t need to sleep.

This year I was told that the city required a business license from me if I was to sell at the event, which I learned at the vendor meeting. What I didn’t learn is that the city didn’t have a working website to do this on, so I had to drive back to Simi a second time in order to complete the paperwork and pay the most expensive fee yet for a city’s one-day business license: $57.

Mrs M opted out so she could stay home and prepare for MrsMowry’s 30th birthday (a good choice, that), so I got a double booth all to myself.

Observations

This is event # 6 of 10 in our 4th Annual Spring Fling. Miles to go before we sleep.

As I drove to the event in the dark, it was misting. That turned into a heavy mist. That turned in to, “Oh, hell no, it’s not going to rain, is it?”

It didn’t, but it did get a little wet once during the event. No big thing, but it was a cloudy, cool day. Perfect for a Spring Fling event.

Plenty of volunteers – at 5 in the morning – to help me unload. A volunteer assured me they would be there to help me load as well … and they were. This event gets an A+ for having volunteers to help. The volunteers I had, though – adults and teenagers – knew nothing about event spaces, but were good to move the heavy stuff.

The event gets a D for how they marked booth spaces – chalk numbers faintly written on the top of the curbs. In the dark, you had to turn on a flashlight and be right on top of the numbers before they were legible. There were no marks for the boundaries of the booth: not left/right, nor front/back. I was the first in my area, so I placed my canopies centered on the booth #s. I moved a foot or so out of the gutter (nothing good comes from being in the gutter), which put the front of my booth up to the dividing line between lanes on the street. Looked good to me. No one ever commented, so I must have been OK. It wasn’t until 3 hours later that I noticed some random lines on the street that might have been booth space dividing lines, placed out of the gutter on the solid white line marking the edge of the driving lane and beginning of the gutter. Don’t know what those lines were.

The big issue about no front border for the booths became an issue later, unfortunately.

With a 5am unload, I had plenty of time to set up my double booth. Who needs Mrs M anyway?

I worked straight through, got set up, and did have time to sit down and have my breakfast (bagels/cream cheese from home). While I was eating, a guy walked into my booth and went straight to my chess set. “It’s $140 for the set? I want it. But I only have $4. Here, you take the money until I can get to the bank. I’ll be right back.” So, I put the chess set on lay away for $4.

This first sale was long before the event started at 9am. A good beginning, this.

Early in the day, a guy came to the booth and said he wanted to buy a cutting board. That had one of my boards, he said, but it was lost when their house burned to the ground. He wanted to get a new board, and he would bring his wife by later, he said. He did, and that was my first $200 sale of the day.

Not long after they left, another couple was standing by the board I had just put on display, replacing the one just purchased. I did my standard greeting, “Let me know if I can answer any questions,” I said. “Can we buy a cutting board?” he said. That’s what we in the professional sales business call a “buying signal.”

I launched into my standard spiel. Size. Color. I then asked, “What size are you thinking of?” He said, “Can we buy this board?” That’s what we in the professional sales business call a “shut up and take their money signal.” So, I did. In about 10 minutes, I had two different $200 sales.

Good, this is.

I was busy all day. Business wasn’t over the top, but I was on my feet, talking, working. All good. Busy is good.

You can’t choose your neighbors, though. Mine were annoying. And, the promoters get an F on controlling vendors.

On the left, I had a professional politician with an army of volunteers soliciting votes & handing out balloons. He was running for Supervisor, and he had a brigade (their word) of volunteers in front of the booth all day long. When they moved to in front of my booth, I complained, and they pretty much kept to the front of their booth – not IN their booth, but IN FRONT of their booth. They were 100% working the crowd in the center aisle. They never, ever let someone go by without stopping them. They typically had 5 volunteers in front of their booth and 3 volunteers inside of their booth – plus the candidate. No way should they have been allowed to only buy a 10×10 booth.

The balloons were given out by members of the politician’s horde … they never stood in the booth, as the rules said they should.

I actually heard one of the organizers of the effort say, “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.” When that is the philosophy of management, what they’re really saying is “the other vendors are too stupid to do what we’re doing, and the organizers don’t care if we take advantage.”

I. Hate. That.

On my right, I had a professional buy/sell vendor with leather purses & such. He set his canopy up 1′ in front of mine, and then did a waterfall display off of his grid wall that was 1′ in front of his canopy. The result: he had a 2′ corner jutting out in front of my booth. He also had tables set up back to the gutter and boxes on the planter behind, so he had about a 16′ deep booth going.

The 2′ corner in front of my booth. I actually had one lady come into my booth wanting to buy a purse.

The net result of all of this was that customers were directed by my neighbors to walk away from my booth. I did push back against the politician’s minions when they were standing IN FRONT OF MY BOOTH, but, overall, I was confident that my 20′ of frontage (which neither of my neighbors had) got me the attention that I had paid for. Had I had only 10′ of frontage – if Mrs M would have been there – then we would have had trouble. I would have become “that guy.” I would have insisted the organizers step in.

Oh, and that $57 business license I had to buy? No one ever checked. I’m going to bet my buy/sell neighbor didn’t have it. Following rules may be frustrating at times, but I have to live with me.

The final hour came, and my sales picked up. Once again, the final hour of the event was very, very good to me.

Requests were for a 6″ Lazy Susan (it was an archery thing, I was told), more chess sets (AARRGGHH!!), a horsey wall hanging, skateboard decks (x2), something in a golf theme and an actual pastry board with side walls and bread hooks.

The Food

Best Meal: Birthday cake with MrsMowry, as she celebrated her 6th 5th birthday. Of course!

I started making coasters at the end of last year, and sold a few immediately. Then I went to Fresno, and sold them all.

Funny, that.

Coasters are a bit of a pain to make, really. Lots of steps. Lots of sawdust (that’s the fun part). And, anytime you decide you’re going to make 80 of something, it’s a significant undertaking. Especially since, in addition to the 80 coasters, I also made 20 holders.

The Board Chronicles is an ongoing series of articles about the adventures of Mrs M’s Handmade as a vendor at community festivals & craft fairs. Mrs M’s subsidiary, Mr M’s Woodshop, has been approved to create this chronicle for the good of vendorkind.

Do gooders. We need more of’em.

The Sylmar Women’s Club hosts a couple of luncheons a year, and invites vendors to help with their fund raising. The purpose of the event is to raise money for scholarships offered to Sylmar High seniors to go to college.

I’m a fan.

Add that to the idea that the President is a good friend, and I’m all in.

We’re always busy on the weekends of the events, though, so we’ve never been able to do one of these luncheons. The calendar fell right this time. Time to see what all of the fuss is about.

New Ideas

It’s a one day event, and a table top event. They provide an 8′ table. I’m breaking rules here: this will be the only one of these I do this year.

Observations

This is event # 5 of 10 in our 4th Annual Spring Fling.

I’m solo: Mrs M stayed home. Plus, the promoter only allows one table per vendor to accentuate product diversity in a limited space.

Setup was cake. I rolled the product in on the cart, and put it on the table. I could get used to doing easy events like this.

The event hours were 10 – 3. Pretty much nothing happened while the ladies were at lunch, so there was shopping 10 – 12, and a bit more on the exit at 2:45.

Lots of vendor friends at this event. Love that.

The ladies were very engaged as they strolled around the room, looking at raffle prizes & the vendor tables. I gave away a lot of business cards, which is always a good thing.

This event has only a limited number of vendors, so it’s often not easy to get in. I was fortunate that they had a table when I had a free date on the calendar.

The Food

Best Meal: Chicken Marsala was served for lunch. I must be living right.

The saw has certainly earned its keep. After I purchased what was then the most expensive tool that I’d ever purchased – at about $1,000 – I’ve built everything on this saw from our kitchen cabinets to my office desk to, oh, a few thousand cutting boards.

Here’s my office desk … can you tell that I’m a reader?

Busy, I am.

I bought the saw in 2004. All was well until a couple of months ago, when the saw started, uh, not starting.

I would hit the switch, and the saw would just sit there, hum, and blow the breaker.

For the uninitiated, when a major tool chooses to blow the breaker rather than starting the motor, it is a bad thing. A very bad thing.

Most of the time, the saw started, albeit slowly. (ed. note: I start slowly, these days, too. Just sayin’.) If the blade didn’t turn at all, I could quickly turn the saw off, rotate the blade by hand, turn the saw back on, and it would usually start. Eventually. It was in that condition that I limped along while I figured out what to do. I didn’t really want to buy a new table saw, not really. The new saw I had my eye on – which would be a huge upgrade – would require me to rewire the garage woodshop, and spend several times what my original saw cost on the new model. Great idea, but the bank account said now was not the time to spend that kind of money.

I reached out to some wise people, and they agreed that I probably needed a new motor for my saw, or at least a rebuilt one. No problem, there was a motor shop locally that was recommended … but they would not touch Craftsman tools.

No problem, I just went to SearsPartsDirect.com, and researched a replacement motor. Called customer service, who told me the motor was discontinued.

Sears Craftsman Professional Tablesaw, 152.221240.

I turned on the Google machine to search the interweb, and eventually found that this Sears “Craftsman Professional” Table saw, model 152.221240, was actually built by a company called Steel City. They were out of business.

Except, maybe they weren’t, as I continued my searches. Some indicated they were in business, but were operating out of Canada exclusively (and that’s out of business?). I called Steel City, and found that they had the replacement for my saw’s original motor in stock. Happy to ship. Fabulous!

So, $400 later, the new motor was on the way. I scheduled the Engineer to come help me do the install, and hoped the old motor would see me through in the meantime.

It did. The big day finally arrived, and I cleaned the shop in anticipation of some big doings.

The biggest problem was that we had no idea what we were doing. There were no instructions from Sears other than “discontinued.” Steel City had no instructions. You Tube. Google. You name it, no one had instructions on how to change the motor on this cabinet saw. There were plenty of videos for other saws, but this one … no.

I did reach out to a woodworker on one of the forums I monitor who had posted about replacing his motor, and asked if he had any tips, and he was most helpful. So, with the original owner’s manual describing the original assembly, and as much knowledge as I could gather from the web, we set off to install the new motor. Here are the step-by-step instructions, as accurate as I could make them. Your mileage may vary.

1. Unplug the saw from the power source. Unplug the saw motor from the power cord inside the cabinet.

3. Set up a folding table so you have plenty of space to put the parts as you remove them from the table saw.

4. Get cups, plastic bags or whatever so you can place hardware into labeled containers so you can easily keep each set of screws, bolts, nuts & washers separate and identifiable. You will thank me later.

5. Remove the on/off switch from the front rail, and then remove the Guide Tube (it’s what you lock the rip fence to).

6. Remove the Outfeed Table.

7. Remove the Rear Rail. Be careful with the laminated “Accessory Biesemeyer Extension Table,” which is only held on by 2 bolts through each of the Rails.

8. Remove the Front Rail.

9. Remove the Extension Wings. Label them “Right Wing” and “Left Wing.” Avoid political discussions at this stage, though we did observe that we were Making the Table Saw Great Again.

10. Remove the Motor Cover (the big, red plastic thing on the right side of the saw).

11. Remove the “Table Surface,” as it’s referred to on page 15 of the Owner’s Manual. It’s the center table top. It’s held on by 4 bolts, 2 of which are outside of the cabinet on the left side, and 2 of which are the center-most just inside of the right side of the cabinet. BE CAREFUL. There are shims between the cabinet and the table surface that are easily misplaced. Save them in their original positions. Use masking tape to secure them so they don’t move.

12. The motor is mounted to a bracket on a spring-loaded hinge pivot. The weight of the motor keeps tension on the belt; you can lift the motor to remove the belt.

13. Lucky 13. You can now remove the motor from the cabinet. 4 bolts. We lifted the motor with ropes around both sides of the motor to take the weight, and then removed the bolts.

14. Note the position of the pulley on the motor shaft. Dimensions are important: the pulley most be directly parallel to the Arbor Pulley for the belt to track properly. Remove the hex set screw from the pulley. Gently pry the pulley off the motor shaft, and remove the key from the shaft.

15. Seize the moment and fully clean and lubricate the trunnions and gears that control the tilt and height of the blade.

16. Install the pulley on the new motor’s shaft using the key and hex set screw.

17. Install the motor on the bracket on the spring-loaded hinge pivot.

18. Install the belt. Check the alignment of the pulleys to ensure proper tracking. Adjust as necessary.

19. Re-install the Table Surface, making sure that the shims are in the proper place once the masking tape is removed.

20. Re-install the blade, blade insert, blade guard and miter gauge. Reconnect the motor to the switch and the saw to the power. Adjust the blade to be vertical from the table. Do a test cut to make sure the blade and table have the right orientation to each other.

21. Unplug the saw.

22. Reassemble the table saw, doing steps 10 – 5 in reverse order.

We got it right the first time, fortunately. Test cuts were perfect. The saw now sounds great. I can’t wait to rip some 8/4 Hard Maple to see how my famously under-powered table saw performs with its brand new motor.